This document is a non-normative reference that provides
details to help
producers of HTML content
create
conformant documents,
and to help others check the conformance of existing documents.
It has the following design goals:

to describe the semantics of
HTML elements
and their attributes (that is, to describe what the elements
and attributes represent)

to be clear and unambiguous

to be as concise and readable as possible

The first two of the above design goals make this reference
similar in scope to the
[HTML5 for Web Authors]
subset of the normative
[HTML5]
full specification.

Certain purposes are intentionally out of scope for this
reference document; specifically, it:

does not provide any descriptions of implementation
conformance criteria for
HTML consumers;
in particular, it does not attempt to explain how Web browsers
and other user agents are meant to process documents

does not provide detailed information on APIs related to
processing of HTML content by
HTML consumers.

For implementation conformance criteria for
HTML consumers
and detailed information on related APIs, instead see the
[HTML5]
full specification.

Finally, because this document is intended for use strictly
as a reference, it does not attempt to also be a tutorial or
“how to” authoring guide.